Xavier Dolan’s Juste la fin du monde in principal photography

Late last month, Xavier Dolan announced Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only the End of the World) with production set to start at the tail end of May. Now he has posted a behind-the-scenes look at Léa Seydoux, which means the movie is already in its production-stage – more precisely, principal photography.

Dolan has barely finished his duties at the Cannes Film Festival – as a member of the jury – seeing as the festival just ended late last week. To say the Québecois director works fast and efficiently would be an understatement.

Seydoux, pictured above, will star alongside Marion Cotillard, Vincent Cassel, Nathalie Baye and Gaspard Ulliel in the movie based on a Jean-Luc Lagarce-play by the same name. In it, “a writer goes back to his hometown, planning on announcing his upcoming death to his family. As resentment soon rewrites the course of the afternoon, fits and feuds unfold, fuelled by loneliness and doubt, while all attempts of empathy are sabotaged by people’s incapacity to listen, and love.”

While Dolan was a member of the jury in Cannes this year, he won, and shared, the Jury Prize with Jean-Luc Godard’s Adieu au langage last year. The prize was indeed well-deserved, as Mommy is undoubtably one of the most sentimental and beautiful movies of 2014. I called it a masterpiece – and Dolan’s magnus opus – in my review, and still stand by those statements one hundred precent almost a year on. With movies like his directorial debut, J’ai tué ma mère, and the follow-ups, Les amours imaginaires, Laurence Anyways and Tom à la ferme, he truly is one of the most unique and endearing young voices in modern auteur cinema, and I cannot wait to learn more about Juste la fin du monde – and his next project, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.